Gravity Rush (PS Vita) Review

Lots of Challenges to Do
If you happen to not enjoy the missions within Gravity Rush, there are numerous side challenges that you can do. Through the city of Hekseville, you might’ve noticed that there are gems floating around. Collecting those gems will give you an ability to unlock not only more powers for Kat, but to also unlock side challenges where you can play some sort of a mini game to beat the high score, and if you beat it, you get more gems. Collecting these gems plays a vital role in the game and doing the side challenge is somewhat necessary as the more gems you get, the more powerful Kat becomes.

As for the kind of challenges, they all vary. Some of the challenges will involve you defeating Nevis on a certain number amount of time, a time-trial sort of mini-game, and many more. Expect the game to give you a lot of great things to do.

Upgrade to Make Kat Stronger
Aside from being an action-adventure game, it has some sort of RPG elements where you will have to develop Kat’s abilities to make her stronger. Using the gems that you get from taking out the Nevis, doing challenges, or simply strolling through Hekseville, you can use those gems to make Kat stronger. Stats like her health and kicks are among the things that you can upgrade. During the first half of the game, you will see that each of the things that are upgradable with Kat are up to level 5 only. To make it the max level, you will have to get through the game, do the things that makes the townspeople happy, and you can max out her stats at the end of the game. The character progression of Kat is linear but it will take some patience doing those challenges to fully max out her stats since it all relies on getting a huge amount of gems.

NOT

Motion Controls Can Be Troublesome
Through the PlayStation Vita’s tilt controls and touch screen, you’ll have to use them a lot of times when playing Gravity Rush. At first, everything seems to be cool and pretty spot on but as you go through the game and spend several hours playing, controlling Kat via the handheld’s tilt controls can make you sick.

Another Vita feature that I find annoying is when it implements both touch screen and gyro. During the racing side-challenge of the game, you will have to use your two thumbs to make Kat slide through the game and with the handheld’s gyro controls, you will help her navigate through. It would be nice if the gyro can be as accurate as to those found on the consoles, but not really. The gryo can be annoying and the sad thing is, you can’t turn it off and just use the button controls. Pretty much if you’re wanting to get that Gold in a racing challenge, expect to have a hard time.

Load Times Can Be Pretty Long
One of the annoying things that I found while playing Gravity Rush is its long load times. When you start a mission or load your saved data, you can expect to have a long load time that varies from thirty to forty-five seconds – sometimes it’s longer.

A Sandbox Game but Not Really
You will get the impression that Gravity Rush is a sandbox game on the first couple of missions. As you go deeper within the game, you’ll see what the game lacks and that is the interaction and the things you can do within the open-world city of Hekseville. Since what Gravity Rush offers are only side challenges, it feels in the end that the game lacks what a sandbox game should have been and that’s a variety of things that are available to do.

VERDICT

In over twenty PS Vita games that I’ve played, I must say that Gravity Rush is the best one so far. Everything the game has from original story, lovable characters, exemplary visuals and great gameplay makes Gravity Rush stand out. Controls can be annoying at times but once you get past its learning curve, you are on the ride to enjoy a game on a PS Vita that will make you feel you’re playing on the console. Those who just picked up a PS Vita should definitely check out Gravity Rush and you will not be disappointed one bit.

[Editor’s Note: Gravity Rush was reviewed on the PS Vita platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]